


backlash

by selbbircs



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 20:36:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6922498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selbbircs/pseuds/selbbircs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>think of it this way: if one is in a position to grab power, one’s position also ensures that one has no choice but to grasp that power to survive. </p><p>raira/raijin trio reverse au. written in reply to this fill: http://drrrkink.livejournal.com/1786.html?thread=2465018#t2465018</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. quadratics (give and take)

“How do you draw the graph of y=e^5x-2?”

“However you draw it, you’re still drawing it yourself.” 

“But I wouldn’t be asking if I actually wanted to draw it, would I?” 

“You wouldn’t need to if you stopped surfing for porn and did your work properly.”

Orihara Izaya pouted and watched the shape of his mouth in the reflection on the computer screen while switching from the incriminating tab. “Ryuugamine-san doesn’t care that I surf while I do homework.” He says next, littleboy-singsong and slightly bratty, with the hint of theatricality and that tremor of anticipation.

The audience takes a sip of coffee, a little larger than he normally would have. “I’m not Mikado,” he says, almost-casual, “-this coffee needs more sugar.”

Izaya spun faster and faster in his chair, “Yeah, you guys are nothing alike. Makes me wonder how you two could have stayed friends so long. How you could even stand each other. How the heck did you guys even meet?” No response. He brings his knees up against his chest. “I mean, you guys had to be pretty close, seeing that you’re all “Mikado” this and “Mikado” that, and he’s got like fifty thousand pictures of you in his phone. And I get you’re like, the only ones in this town not slicing each other’s heads off, but still, what were you guys to each other? What are you guys to each other?” 

The chair stopped spinning, and Izaya refreshed the page in front of him, still talking. “I suppose there is the possibility that it was all one-sided, though, yeah, I thought that’d make the most sense, but…couldn’t be. After all yours is the only name he calls when he comes-”

The ground was carpeted, but the chair was still high and his back still hurt in like four places, ow that was going to bruise tomorrow- “Who taught you to say that?”

And the doctor was still on top of him, one hand snarled in his hair, pulling his head back to expose his throat. His neck hurts along with his back, and he can smell sweat and coffee beans and wet cigarettes and he can’t help but grin. “Was it Shiki-san? Awakusu-kai? Who?”

He reaches up and runs the ridge of his thumb along the doctor’s wrist, just like he practiced, like the way Ryuugamine Mikado does it- and feels the other man’s breath catch. The hand in his hair tightened, and he barely had time to hiss before the other man crushes his lips against his, harsh, too desperate.

He wants to laugh, but he can’t breathe, and almost chokes.

The doctor only really looks at him as he breaks away. The boy is too pale and a little grey behind his flushed cheeks and, and he looks away from those glittering red eyes that know and focuses on smirking, swollen lips (that tasted nothing like-)

 

And he really couldn’t look at those eyes this time. But the boy said nothing, just stuck out his tongue like he’d done something wrong and was proud of it, small and pink and would look just as good wrapped around a lollipop or someone (else)’s cock. 

There’s something wrong with that, Kida thinks, but lets it into his mouth anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> de-anoning, and 6 years late. it's dumb, but i've always been really sorry to the op for not finishing. even though i barely knew her and she won't see this, haha. 
> 
> written September 2010


	2. secondary (powers required)

Heiwajima Shizuo hates violence. He really, really does.

And no wonder, if you thought about it. He had a nice, idyllic childhood, with a mom and a dad and a little brother who wasn't even that much of a pest. He thought TV was boring, so there was no need for talks on which shows he couldn't watch. Video games? Not a chance, Mario was for nerds who couldn't catch spiders.

That wasn't to say there hadn't been a few incidents. Like the time when Kasuka, his little brother, had eaten out of his pudding cup. He couldn't really remember, it had been a while ago, but all of a sudden he'd been lying under the refridgerator with a stabbing pain in his neck. 

Word got around, and he went back to school with a brace around his neck, only to be back in hospital two hours later with various from getting into a fight with some idiots who'd been laughing at him. 

His mother scolded him all the way to the hospital. "For god's sake, you're ten this year, you should know that violence brings you nothing but trouble. Imagine, trying to throw a table at your classmates...do you think you're some sort of superhuman being? You couldn't even pick up the table properly...fractures are no joke..."

Those words haunted him through the passing years. There had been other similar skirmishes through his childhood, where he'd pick up heavy objects around him in a fit of anger, all with the same result: painful fractures that had been long to heal, and many weeks spent lying in bed. His parents had punished him, grounded him, sent him for weekly therapy....in any case, by the time he turned 13, the persistent pain, boredom, and too many afternoons spent on stained couches with creepy therapists asking too many questions, the message had finally sunk in-

Violence really, really sucked. 

And so ended the attempts at furniture-throwing. 

To this day, his left ankle was still a little stiff, no doubt something left over from an old fracture. His old injuries also greatly impeded his athletic ability, and he had had to sit out on many sessions of Phys Ed. Not to mention the problems he had with blood circulation, the lessons he had to catch up with after missing spending so much time at home, and all the old friends who now thought of him as a weird table-throwing loser who couldn't even run properly anymore.

All those, however, he could take.

This, he could not. 

This, meaning coming home to find his nice, idyllic house splattered with blood. This, meaning seeing Kasuka standing over their parents' bodies holding a sword. His quiet little brother, with blood all over his face, his hands, dripping from his hair.

Eyes glowing an unearthly red.

You see, when the quiet, nonviolent Heiwajimas discovered that their eldest son's reckless, (self)destructive tendencies, they had been devastated. They tried everything to make him normal. They hired a therapist. They hired an exorcist. They tutored him to make sure he could catch up with all the lessons he missed. They were ecstatic when it all seemed to be working. 

They seemed to have forgotten all about their other son. 

Quiet little Kasuka. He learned to cook dinner himself after his parents started staying at the hospital overnight. When the bullies started picking on him for being a bed-ridden weirdo's little brother, he bought some pepper spray with his own money. He started to go for walks around the neighbourhood at night, when he realised his parents would never know he was gone.

He probably found the sword on one of those walks, come to think of it.

It told him its name was Saika.

It promised to love him. And to teach him how to love.

"I thought, that must be why they don't love me. Because I thought and thought, and I couldn't think of anything else. So it must be because I’m so empty. Because I can’t love them. They can’t love me because I can't love them. " 

Kasuka stepped forward, eyes glowing bright red above a large, large smile. Shizuo had never seen him look so happy. 

"So I decided, Saika will teach me how to love them. And even if I can't, even if I can't it's okay, because Saika will love them for me. "

Kasuka tiptoed until his face was right in front of Shizuo's. 

"I love you, brother."

And then he stabbed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written October 2010.


	3. hello

He had noticed him that morning. 

He was standing at his desk, just diagonally across from his. He could see his profile clearly. Delicate features, like a girl’s, dark bangs falling just over the top of his ear. He had a nice voice, smooth and velvety if not for the slightly higher pitch at certain words. Mouth opening and closing, shaping words-

“-North Middle School. I hope we’ll all get along. I look forward to meeting with all kinds of intersting people.”

He turned his face to the side very slightly. For the first time, Shizuo saw that his eyes glinted dark red.

“My name is Orihara Izaya.”

********

He was looking straight at him with radiant a radiant smile and wary eyes. Shadows danced on his face. His eyes were darker out here. 

“What is it?”

-Again, he’d already asked it before. Eyes narrowed just slightly. “If you have nothing to say-“

“-What are you.”

Silence. Shizuo licked his lips and tried again. “W-what…what are you?”

A bird called, somewhere. A car horn. It was still so quiet, up here. Up here. 

“….You made it stop. No one could do that….so you have to be….. you can’t be..can’t be…no, wait! Don’t go!” He made to grabbed his wrist, but the other boy easily twisted his arm back out of his grip. “Please don’t…you have to make it stop, you’re the only one who can- “

“I have no idea what you’re talking about-“

“SAIKA!” Shizuo knows he’s screaming, he doesn’t care, it’s the first time he’s been able to hear his own voice in so long and it’s because of this boy and he doesn’t know why but it’s quiet and he has to know, he has to know he’s the only one he’s been able to speak to in years, he’s the only he doesn’t want to cut and “YOU HAVE TO HELP ME-“

-and suddenly someone touched his arm I love I love I love I lovelovelovelovelovelove come back   
loveyouloveloveloveyou let go of me loveloveletmelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelove

*****************

“He’s been sedated and put in the sick bay, his guardians are coming for him very soon. I’m so sorry you had to experience something like this on your first day. “

“It’s perfectly fine. “

“Are you sure you don’t want me to call your parents? It’s fine if you skipped the rest of the day.” 

“I’ll be all right, sir. I’ll just take my leave now. Thank you so much for the tea!”

 

Orihara Izaya shut the door and walked down the empty hallway, taking his cellphone out of his pocket. He stared expressionlessly at it for a moment. 

"...Saika...hm?"

His footsteps echoed in the empty hallway as he pressed a number on his keypad. 

"...Ne, Ryuugamine-san....yes, I'm still in school...what can I say? School is so boring the only thing I can do is relive all the naughty things I do with you...don't you wanna hear about what I'm doing with my uniform now?~~"

"-ah, of course not, of course not, you have no sense of humor, Ryuugamine-san....yes, well..." He looked up to see the sick bay door right in front of him, and gave a smile that was completely different from the one he had shown the principal.

"...Ne, Ryuugamine-san...you learn interesting things in school, don't you think?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written November 2010.


	4. rustle

the first moment is also the last moment. 

this is not something shinra whispers to himself in the dark, when sleepwalking through school amongst the daylight people, when bandaging his knuckles with his teeth, blood pounding in every pore. it is something he cannot whisper, or hum. he only breathes it. he only hears it sing in his bones as he wakes, as he falls asleep, as the battles unfold in dank phosphorescent caves, where the blood falls in patterns only he can see. and the truth, the one truth, is carved into every curve, every muscle of the people thinking “i fight to show i am alive", as opposed to because he’d fooled them into believing his life and theirs are one and the same. 

end.

head (the snake eats its own)

this all began when the woman brought back his father’s head. 

he must not have been more than seven. he’d woken, eyes bleary, red sparks flying, and there, in the corner of the hallway, half shadowed and half in the pool of light cast by his nightlight, was his father’s face. he’d been happy for a scant few moments before he’d realised his father’s face was far too high up. 

and it’d all just gone downhill from there. 

dragon boy (progeny)

this all began with four boys, skinny and scarred, more frightened than they dared to show and stronger than they dared to know. 

He cannot hear anything. it hurts to breathe. “saviour”, “strong” the boys, his vassals whisper. he cannot stop them. “i am not a saviour” he wants to say back.i am not alive. i do not breathe. i walk and run and smile and lie, because i cut myself to drink my own blood, to feed off the rage that keeps my heart beating. 

but he held is silence, and in that silence something swirls into being. “ryu” one of the boys whispers, hisses, with all the reverence and gravity of a ceaseless vibration that called forth light into vast empty eternity. 

“ryuu” the boys, now transformed into vassals, whispered, first to each other, than to no one, then to everyone, a vast, ceaseless chanting that echoed, the walls, the dark and the dead beneath their feet speaking it as one 

“ryuu” spoke a thousand voices, and of all of them he only heard one, a slinky voice that scraped like fear and caressed like mist. and in that moment he saw both beginning and end scratched into the cement walls. 

the dragon uncurled like a flame, and did not call for its father. 

“i will make them fear us”, he said, skin cold from the fire in his blood, and one of his vassals shut his eyes, like a man whose prayer had been heard. 

 

liars

“dullahan” the boy said. 

He looked up. They were in the classroom. School was out, and blinding light slanted across the desks, onto the board with the chores schedules, the table graffiti’ed with “loser” and “moron”. the brass band was practicing, the strains of “stand by me”wafting up from the field. He couldn’t wait to get out. he’d felt poorly all day, and his palms sweat and tingled. and then this. 

The boy continued standing in front of him. “dullahan” he said again, rounding every syllable out slowly like he was afraid he’d been misheard. his accent, shinra noted. was not bad. 

he shifted his glasses. the tingling was getting worse. ‘I heard you the first time.”

at first, it was hard to tell if the boy had heard him. on his face, there was nothing, then a shadow of a something. shadow like a film of fine dust. Not a smile. not a crinkle of the eye. everything on his face shifted ever so slightly, not a different expression, but waiting to become one. 

shinra thought, “one that lies, even to himself.”

the liar with a face that waits said “i have a proposition for you.”

shinra thought, and said: “I don’t wish to hear it.”

The expression shifted a little more. “not even sparing a moment of your consideration?”

shinra said “there is nothing you can do for me, and there is nothing you can do to make me fear you."

the boldness shocked the liar. he laughed. His expression was no longer waiting, but acquires expectancy. 

“you are young,” the liar said. “you do not yet understand that to lead means that you will never exist untouched. you stand far away from the ocean thinking no spray can touch you yet you fail to see that cold water slides under the ground you stand on, whispering the ripples of a pool far away. the ground is live with secrets. and the wells run deep where you stand.” 

shinra said: “leave. i have nothing for you.” and when the other young man did not move he picked his own bag up and removed himself from the farce of the daylight. 

he didn’t need that boy. shinra thought, shouldering past cheerleaders, hall monitors, teache’s carrying books. if he thought that one pithy word could make shinra consider him an equal. or worse, someone beholden to him for advice, for information.

dullahan.

the problem is that you’re too late, shinra thought, palming the yellow bandana in his pocket. i already have her. 

 

scales

the mcdonald’s they chose was posh, but strangely dark-toned, purple flooring silver tile edges. shinra felt blinded. also lax, like a marionette. 

his men had left him at his seat and were now all crowding about the counter, a jostling, gangly bunch, winking at the cashier and whining about sauce flavors. 

shinra glanced to his left. there, the pass to his survival, his only guard left at his post, was deliberately scouring the bottom of a nearly empty McFlurry container. his eyes dull and beady, full of concentration, and only his flabby lips curl and uncurl in a fit of nearly constant, guttural grunting. shinra, if not utterly wiped, would find the scene deeply amusing. the fact that he knew that the dark stain on the young man’s shirt sleeve was not ketchup but real blood just gave it a whole other level of satirical brilliance, he thought. 

at that thought, his shoulder twinged, and he winced, rubbing it. These latest turf wars are taking a toll, he thought glumly, eyes shut against whirring phosphorescent lights. 

it didn’t used to be like this, for most of his tenure, the turfs had been clearly marked out, the division of proceeds from racketeering, if not particularly fair, clearly agreed on, access to each district’s brothels and pornography theatres allowed with almost strict religiosity. 

not recently. random attacks on both parties happening with nearly rhythmic occurrence, and then even the mild comfort of predictability and infrequency had been removed. the feud was spreading like wildfire, his instructions of restraint not reaching the farthest flung and more mobile parties in his empire, attacks he only heard of when dealing with the fallout in the form of other attacks closer to his person. disconnect with his leadership, growing day by day. factions. 

(“That,” the information broker had said to him, “is a sign of illness.”)

(He didn’t need someone like that tell him that. not him. not his father’s son.)

Shinra was young. not because of the colour of his identification card, not because of the algebra books in his bag, the baggy clothes hanging off his frame, not because of the smooth-faced smile that got him past shopkeepers and patrol cops alike. he was young because he could still recover from a blade wound and fight in the streets within 8 hours. he was young because he ran an empire out of an abandoned train tunnel and still dared to call most of his retainers his friends. because he could walk down into that tunnel night after night and still believe there was a way out, a life for himself above and outside. 

he was young in all those ways. he was old enough to see that he was young, but not old enough to not gamble. 

old enough to gamble with lives instead of chips. not old enough to gamble with chips. not old enough not to gamble. 

but it was too good a bet not to try. 

LIST ONE: KISHITANI SHINRA’S RULES OF POWER:

the bigger your gang, the stronger you are  
the stronger the gang, the less likely someone would step on its toes. it is simply a matter of power. power can keep lower people in line.  
power also ensures that if one is in a position to grab power, one’s position also ensures that one has no choice but to grasp that power to survive.  
you cannot change the rules without losing dominance.  
power is thus, merely self-propagating

THINGS SHINRA WOULD BE WILLING TO BET ON:

his yellow scarves gang was the largest one within ikebukuro territory.   
the blue squares, being a significantly smaller gang whose profit margin derives from the continued illegal activity of the yellow scarves.  
the blue squares would not have dared attempt an insurrection like this without the backing of a larger organisation  
a larger organisation would be one that would have problems hiding its tracks  
the yellow scarves, being the largest known existent gang within ikebukuro, has a far reaching information system encompassing numerous smaller gangs and businesses all acting as fronts, plants within those fronts, and shell organisations certain smaller gangs believe themselves to be working for. 

HENCE:

 

shinra opened his eyes. his eyes were dry, the lights were bright, and it hurt. but he didn’t look away. the light flashed red, then bruised dark, then black, bleeding into dark shadows.

a tumor, he thought. resentment self-propagating in the bones, poison in the veins. 

grasp it hard or let it kill you, he thought. 

Of course, this was why he had gone directly to what was likely to be the source of all the mayhem.

(the information broker knew every time a blade of grass slipped through a crack in the sidewalk, a gun slipped between hands, a knife between ribs)

(no doctor worth his salt merely treats symptoms. rather, they know that symptoms only foretell an invasion into the inner sanctum of the body, or a betrayal from within the sanctum itself.)

(symptoms only end when something of great value can be isolated and sacrificed)

(number 6)

of course, he thought dimly, he could have just abandoned this entire enterprise. from the moment he’d gotten a hold of that woman, there was no need to continue with the struggle. 

“hey boss. boss, you want fries?”

“idiot!” loud smack. “let the boss sleep. and anyway who are you to be offering those fries, i paid for them, you dipshit.”

“don’t cll be dispirit, douchebag, and besides, its cause you owe me the money from that time you had to go to the roping district-“

“HEY hey break it up!-dude! what the hell leave the sundaes alone!”

Shinra sighed and began to get up, only to be stopped by a firm hand on his shoulder.

it was the McFlurry man. There was oreo by his lip. his voice was softer than one would expect from his frame. “lie back down. I’ll take care of them. i’ll pack the food and you can eat it when we get back to headquarters.”

Shinra wanted to laugh, but found himself entirely too exhausted to do anything but lie down and shut his eyes. the back of his eyelids burned hot red. 

 

tail (constantly, and never)

he holds the head over the thrash compactor, and drops it in. 

the body writhes. he can read screaming in the arc of her ruined back, the ragged, rising rhythm of that skeletal chest. 

the shadows bleed as the compactor wails, chokes, whirring as pile after pile of sludge onto the rusting plate below. 

he presses a button. the colour of the button is faded from repeated pressings. from sweat. from splatter. from age. 

he’s only started this ritual eight weeks ago.

a small eternity in its own right. 

the gears crank into action, and the plate rises, rises, rises. the shadows swirl. for all that they are silent, they howl. he watches. the colours change, from red to black to red, and his eyes don’t burn anymore. 

they howl. they howl.

this is how the story goes:

there was once a boy. he was born a boy and thought would grow into a man but what he did not know was that he would always be nothing but a boy. 

he had a father. the boy did not know what the father knew. even now, when the boy knows there is no life for him above and outside of being a boy, he is not sure if his father knew. he used to believe that his father knew everything, but he is not sure if his father knew this. 

one day, the father returned, bringing with him a headless body female body, that was inexplicably alive. he still remembered the first sight of it like ti was his last, pearl white skin and ebony smoke. 

but this is the wrong story. something in the story is out of place. no, the story is in its right place, its everything else he knows thats placed wrongly.

let us start again. 

there was once a boy that successfully becomes a man even though he has a dream of a world where he doesn’t. one day his father, who knows everything, returns from a trip. it is daylight, there is tea and strawberry cake, and the boy, with cream caked hands opens the box-

and there is a head. 

the head is beautiful. its hair catches the fractured sunlight like fire. its skin glows like alabaster. at its base, smoke, dark as blood, wispy as a dream.

(no dream)

the eyes open

(openopen)

the eyes open, they are red, the smile is powder and dank rust and she hisses “a liar with a face that waits-“

(this story is a song that cannot finish, a blade of grass that cannot grow, an old, whirring machine, too old to keep cranking upward, upward-

what it holds has become heavy with shadows.)

once there was a boy that woke and never ate, drank, or spoke again. everyone marvelled at why he lived. his father, who knew everything except his own death, said his cells were self propagating. his son was a tumor. his son had poison in his veins. 

the boy knew better. the boy never wanted to become a man. the boy slid into the crevices between his many lives and let the secrets seep into his skin. this is how he lives. this is what he bets on. this is a lie. the boy waits for the lie. the boy has no secrets. he has no skin. the boy thought the secrets nourished him, but in reality he had sloughed off his own skin, and these were only flies. 

the man’s eyes open, and the plate, stalled in its path because of the increasing weight of shadows becoming ruined flesh, shudders.

(They cannot die, the boy whispers to himself, his fingers hot, the light from the screen cold on his face. the shadows grow the flesh back no matter what cuts them.)

I deny you, he thinks, i deny, and the plate does what it is calibrated to do, tips at that very moment, the head, fine boned, with a thin film of downy red hair, falls into the thrash compactor once more. 

the shadows cringe from him. he looks down on the skeletal body on the ground, arms tied in iron shackles. the shackles, and the silent arcing wail of the body, mangle the frame in the throes of agony.

“you can’t change the rules,” shinra thinks, fingers on the button. your immortality has become a problem.

(but even then shinra knows the lie. The problem is that he is too late. 

This is not something shinra whispers in the dark, on his back in a mcdonalds surrounded by life, standing in a classroom’s powdery light, in the space between the boy he was before the dullahan and what he had had to become after. This is something he knows, something he knew keenly as he saw the blood spill from the hole at the base of his father’s head, from the moment he took the package from the hands of the small man with eyes the dullest shade of blue. 

From that very first moment, the only one there is, looking into that dullahan’s eyes and understanding that to feel only one thing with intense conviction is the same as feeling nothing at all. )

(This is not what you really want, the broker said as they met for the last time.

No. he admitted. what I want was stolen from me a long time ago. This is only payback.)

The snake eats its own, and the first moment is also the last. a single moment is enough to rob a boy of any hope of a life beyond revenge. This is something he has always known, and has known he can do nothing about.

for now, he thinks. for now. being here will have to be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written May 2016.
> 
> hahaha.
> 
> welcome to the next decade.

**Author's Note:**

> de-anoning, and 6 years late. it's dumb, but i've always been really sorry to the op for not finishing. even though i barely knew her and she won't see this, haha. 
> 
> written September 2010.


End file.
